￼Within Your Power

It’s a big word, smacks of scarier words like “commitment” and “obligation,” and yet, it’s not something you can really put your finger on. What exactly is responsibility, really?

Merriam-Webster.com gives one definition of responsibility as “moral, legal, or mental accountability,” but even accountability is confusing and still a little scary. We have to be responsible, be held accountable, for issues of moral, legal, AND mental natures? So we have to be responsible for literally everything, then?

Dictionary.com gives a less terrifying definition: “the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one’s power, control, or management.”

Within one’s power.

So many of us, myself included, have fallen prey to Merriam-Webster’s definition, thinking that literally everything falls under our own personal To-Do lists. We are Yes-Men and Women, thinking that we can do it all, that we HAVE to do it all, and yet our own expectations are often higher than anyone else’s. We know logically that no one person can do everything, but our pride and our ego tell us that we can. That we will succeed or die trying.

Die trying might be exactly what we do, however, as we push ourselves to do more, more, more until finally we drop of exhaustions often both mental and physical. No matter what responsibilities we may have taken on, then, we are unable to do anything.

So before you, or I, take on the fearful role of master of everything, I encourage you to take a step back and think. Push aside any pride or ego you may have and ask yourself: what is within your power, your control, your management? Can you really do it all, or just a part? Can you do it by yourself, or could you use a little help?

We at The Summit have the responsibility to give you the best news, the best features, the best information, that are within our power to give.